Specialised gangs piloting drones to fly drugs and weapons into prisons are working up and down the country to “beat” the system, the governor of HMP Manchester has told Sky News.
The Category A prison, formerly known as Strangeways, has been described as having “ceded” its airspace to illegal drone operators, who are using increasingly sophisticated technology to deliver contraband to inmates.
“We’ve got prisoners that we’re catching with Rambo-style knives,” governor Rob Knight told Sky News.
“We’ve had a machete in the prison. We’ve had all sorts of manufactured lock knives.”
Sky News has obtained footage filmed by an inmate from inside his cell at HMP Manchester, showing a drone dangling a package at the end, attempting to smuggle in contraband.
It was later intercepted by staff, and the prisoner who filmed the footage in 2023 was sentenced to nine months for having a phone in jail.
There were 1,712 drone incidents in prisons in England and Wales between April 2024 and March 2025 – a new peak.
Drone incidents at prisons were up 1,140% in the five years to April 2025.
In a new report, the government’s independent spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), has said the prison service and the government have been “too slow” to respond to “urgent threats”, with maintenance backlogs and significant budget underspends on security measures like anti-drone equipment leaving prisons “vulnerable”.
Mr Knight describes the issue as having “moved into a new era”, with improvements in technology and advancing criminality.
“It’s moved from a position of haphazard youngsters or disorganised local criminals to now being gangs that are specialised in this, focused on this, and making a lot of money from doing it, so they are working up and down the country to beat our systems,” he said.
‘We don’t police the airspace’
Sky News spent a Friday evening with Greater Manchester Police in an unmarked car, as they showed us an illustration of the types of drones they have recovered on previous operations.
“People round here will just put the drone out with a package attached on to it, fly it over to the prison… the package will go in and the drone will just come back. And then they’re gone,” one officer told us.
“It’s as easy as that, and as quick as that,” she said.
“We don’t police the airspace,” Detective Chief Superintendent Lewis Hughes, of Greater Manchester Police, told Sky News.
“Organised criminals have cottoned on to the fact that it’s very difficult to target and intercept drones,” he said, describing how “technically complicated” it is to stop a drone mid-flight, “especially when you don’t know where that pilot is”.
He added: “It’s a growing and evolving problem. Whilst drones have been around for a while now, they’ve never been more readily available.”
Last autumn, Sky News cameras captured drones flying packages of drugs into HMP Wandsworth in the middle of the night.
One delivery went directly to an inmate’s window, though it was later intercepted by staff.
“A lot of prisons, particularly the older prisons, weren’t built with the need to protect against drones in mind,” Jenny George, from the National Audit Office, told Sky News.
“So things like window security need to be improved in order for the prison to be safer.”
Prisons have “not responded with enough urgency to security weaknesses,” Ms George said.
The maintenance backlog for repairs across the prison estate doubled from £0.9bn to £1.8bn between 2020 and 2024.
“There are sometimes frustrating delays,” Mr Knight told Sky News, referring to the procurement process.
“We’re going to be introducing windows here which will be, I think, the first of their kind in this country, which will be drone-proof – we hope.
“I don’t think anything is indestructible but we’re trying to design a window that is as indestructible as possible.
“That has to go through a testing process, it then has to go through planning permission,” he said.
Drugs fuelling ‘violent cycle’ in prisons
The prison service has faced “financial constraints” and “competing priorities” of where to spend funding, Ms George said.
However, it is also in an unusual position of leaving large sums unspent, despite staff frustrations with the slow pace of repairs and improvements.
The NAO report found that the prison service failed to spend £30m (31%) of its drugs strategy funding and £25m (25%) of wider security investment, between March 2019 and March 2025.
There were underspends across several major programmes, including £9.5m which had been earmarked for drug security measures, such as anti-drone kits.
Another £11.2m, which was meant to be spent on physical security measures, including gates, was not used.
Among the reasons the money could not be spent were late approvals from government ministers, which “severely” limited spending.
Meanwhile, funding has fallen for addiction treatment services despite the increase in drug use by prisoners.
And there are large regional differences in spending, which NHS England has not investigated.
In 2024-25, the London region spent around 72% more per prisoner than the eastern region on substance misuse treatment.
The NAO says better co-ordination between healthcare and prison services is essential to give prisoners access to the support they need.
They highlight that 160,000 substance misuse appointments were missed in 2024-25 – amounting to just over a third of the total.
That is despite almost half of the prison population in England and Wales, 40,000 people, having an identified problem in April last year, with 136 drug-related deaths investigated by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman between 2022 and 2024 – 16% of all deaths investigated.
The government has said it is boosting support for offenders to help overcome their addictions, by funding substance-free units in prisons and employing specialist staff.
Drugs contribute to “a violent cycle” in prisons, where violent and unstable prison conditions fuel further demand for drugs, Ms George explained.
The report recommends that the prison service address security as a matter of urgency.
Lord Timpson, the prisons minister, said the NAO report exposes the “failings” that the government “inherited with underinvestment in security contributing to the unacceptable levels of drugs behind bars”.
He added: “We are taking decisive action to grip this crisis, investing £40m to bolster security including anti-drone measures like reinforced windows and specialist netting to keep contraband out.”
